First Lieutenant (ret.) Karel Veselý

“I received my draft card for the army on April 8. I remember the date, because it was my birthday. I reported to Agde precisely on my nineteenth birthday. (…) We were called to a roll call to be sent to various units. They asked about our civilian professions. (…) A new radio-telegraph company was being formed. Most students like me were assigned to the telegraph company; they probably assumed that we would learn Morse code most quickly.”

(During the wine harvest we learnt the news about the outbreak of the war.). “The day after a French policeman came there, saying that since we were Czechs, and thus citizens of the German Reich, we ought to be sent to an internment camp. We explained to him that we were Czechs, that we wanted to join the army and fight alongside the French against the Germans (…) He was adamant at first, but then he relented. – ´You belong to Nîmes, I don’t want to have you here.´ So we went to Nîmes and reported to the prefectural office there (…) They offered us to join the Foreign Legion, but we didn’t want to; no Czechoslovak army existed in France yet. We didn’t want to go to the Legion too much, we knew how things were there.”

“How I got to the resistance, to the Czechoslovak army in France? It was a matter of coincidence, and I have to begin already in 1937. I studied a grammar school in Prague-Smíchov. (…) In the fifth grade I learnt that I could apply for a study in France. The prerequisite was to pass with honours from the first through the fifth grade, and I had this, but I was not the best one. I excelled in foreign languages, I enjoyed that, but I was not so good in science. (...) I didn’t have all A’s, I never got an A in math. I didn’t think I would be selected. There were applicants from all over Czechoslovakia, and seven students were selected.”

“In Britain I was assigned to serve as a telephone operator in the telephone switchboard in the brigade command in Leamington Spa for a certain time. I was to connect calls in the telephone exchange. There were messages like this: 22LHQ to CIABG. I had no idea what it meant. Only later, as I gained more experience, I learnt that it means 22nd Liaison Headquarters between the British army and our army. CIABG was an abbreviation for our army - Czechoslovak Independent Armoured Brigade Group.”